Inspired by: The Lost Happy Endings - Week 3

Inspired by "The Lost Happy Endings," students are encouraged to delve into the realms of possibility and imagination. The learning objective is to use modal verbs and adverbs to express various degrees of possibility. The activity prompts students to consider the impact of all Happy Endings being stolen by Jub, leading to a night where children's bedtime stories might lack their traditional conclusions. The class is tasked with creating alternative endings for classic tales like Goldilocks and the Three Bears, using phrases such as "might have" to speculate on different outcomes. For instance, if Daddy Bear had caught Goldilocks, he might have had a very different reaction. The exercise encourages creativity and language skills as students vote on the top ten most inventive scenarios, exploring the power of language to shape narrative possibilities.

Following the theme of narrative structure, the students engage with "Jub’s Story," analyzing why Carol Ann Duffy chose to write a section in italics and discussing the narrator's identity and perspective. Through this activity, they learn to identify shifts in narration and gain insight into the narrator's character by the book's end. They are also encouraged to compare the structure to other works like "The Invention of Hugo Cabret" and "Wonderstruck" by Brian Selznick, or "Clockwork" by Philip Pullman. In another activity, students examine the development of the witch's character in "The Lost Happy Endings," identifying descriptive language and seeking synonyms using a thesaurus. This leads to a creative writing task where they narrate the witch's final moments, focusing on vivid descriptions and engaging storytelling to captivate the reader's imagination.